


We Will Always Keep It

by aggretsu



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, it could've been canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24136450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggretsu/pseuds/aggretsu
Summary: Fast-forward to the future.
Relationships: Lu Han/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Kudos: 11





	We Will Always Keep It

**Author's Note:**

> old fic from 2012

Fast-forward to the future when he is calmer and can sit for stretches of time without moving to ruffle Zitao's hair or terrorize Minseok from behind. In the future some things are eliminated, like the itch in his palms and the impulse to run. Some people, too. His body is heavy now, the kind of old house that has settled into itself. He practices taichi in the park, slipping out just before sunrise while the streets are still a ghoulish blue and Yixing's huddled body takes the curve of a seahorse against the wall; his back is the last thing Lu Han sees before closing the bedroom door. Yixing sleeps longer and is quieter on the days he is in pain. Lu Han doesn't say anything because there are other ways to make people happy--he knows this, though it has taken him years.

"When have you become so compliant?" Yixing jokes sometimes. "It's been downhill since the day I met you," Lu Han says, which isn't a lie. He has been losing himself since the first day, chipping off in small pieces, but simultaneously repairing, sprouting new growth. Every day removed a strip of bark to reveal the tender white sapling underneath, and every day layered on a fresh coat of paint. It is a constant struggle, to know which parts to keep. His friendship with Yixing was the most familiar mystery, and then the most frustrating, and then it wasn't a friendship anymore. Yixing was a sweet shivering thing underneath him while Lu Han strained to keep his eyes open, to keep his gasping as little gulps of air, silent. They wanted to believe they were dreaming this elaborate dream, that as long as they slept they could postpone the thinking, the piecemeal denial. Onstage Yixing began to hold him at arm's distance, inching towards Kris. Lu Han still laughed just as readily with his face turned to Minseok.

"Honestly, you are the best thing--" Lu Han had wanted to say, on several occasions, but what he actually said was "Fuck you, I've been this good-looking all along." Neither of them ever had any luck at taking compliments with a straight face. Yixing smiled because he was an evil little bastard and let his hand linger in Lu Han's hair before traveling down to rub his thumb against his cheek, needlessly tender. It was such a joke sometimes, but they were still boys. When Jongdae walked into the room Yixing stuffed his hand into his pocket, suddenly shy again.

"We all knew," Kris said later, at the tenth-year reunion. "We weren't stupid, you know."

"Or blind," Zitao added, before shushing the girl on his lap, jiggling his leg until the crying stopped. His wife is very pretty, Yixing noted quietly next to Lu Han. You complaining? Lu Han demanded. Jongdae laughed loudly from across the table. His Chinese comprehension still sucked balls.

"We wouldn't have said anything." In the bathroom Kris watched Lu Han run his hands under the faucet, carefully rubbing out the suds and wiping them dry against the towel Kris handed him. "I just wanted to make that clear."

"You've always been a good guy." Lu Han looked up, hitting Kris with a friendly punch in the arm. Maybe they were too grown-up for these kinds of gestures now. "Duizhang," he added, grinning.

It was true, though, that Kris had always been there, such an unwavering pillar that sometimes the vision of Yixing's wiry frame leaning into their leader's gave Lu Han pause, a small kernel of doubt hardening into a lump in his throat. Benevolent, but still it hurt. Kris had been there first, and longer. Kris was surer and more dependable.

"You're the one I want," Yixing said that night, as if he knew.

"You're crazy," Lu Han said, mostly out of embarrassment. "I didn't even ask." He turned towards the taxi window and repressed a smile against the back of his hand. It was a smile so stupid it begged to be hidden.

The first time Lu Han confessed, he was singing: "Your love is such a tragedy / I want to be buried in it / and bloom flowers in the spring--"

"That's not how the song goes," Yixing interrupted.

"That's how my heart goes," Lu Han said, making direct eye contact.

Yixing didn't notice. "Okay."

The second time they were at a hospital. It was still dark when Lu Han rubbed his eyes awake. Only two hours had passed, and Yixing was in bed watching late-night news on TV. The glow of the screen set his blemished skin alight. An IV dripped steadily into his wrist, and Lu Han thought to himself, How could I be into this, but he was, he really couldn't help it. He was into someone who would always take on more than he could handle, always refuse to confront his own fragility. A pain in the ass. Worried you sick. Worked himself into a coma, and kept going. "Fuck this," Lu Han murmured, and grabbed Yixing's hand, linking their fingers together. Step one. Yixing turned his head, startled, his reactions dulled by the pain relievers. At that point Lu Han didn't care. "I want to take care of you, man." He paused, and then, softer, "Is that okay?" Step two. He didn't wait for an answer, craned his neck forward.

"It was really disgusting," Lu Han said when they were finally able to talk about it, months later. "I could taste, like, your hospital fruit cup."

"Hey," Yixing said, kind of laughing. "It's not like I asked you to--to--you know."

"Kiss you? C'mon, you can say it. You ain't got no vir-gin lips."

"I think you should leave the rapping to Chanyeol."

Lu Han sulked for a moment before brightening. "Why didn't you say 'and Kris'?"

By June they had it down to a science. They angled their heads together and Yixing liked to suck on Lu Han's bottom lip before getting greedy, his hands holding Lu Han's face still. Lu Han would sometimes back off just to watch Yixing flush red, the color spreading down his neck and across his chest into his undershirt.

But it wasn't always easy. Yixing debuted at Helong Stadium in Changsha to a crowd of fifty thousand, and Lu Han felt small and insignificant in his baseball cap and the single glowstick he'd picked up off the floor waiting in line outside. He hadn't told Yixing he was coming; it'd been months since they'd seen each other, and even more before that. Somewhere into EXO's fourth year Lu Han had pulled Yixing aside and said very distinctly, this isn't working. Each syllable sounded more devastating than the last. He felt the regret instantly, sliding into his bones, making itself at home, and he waited for Yixing to disagree. But Yixing didn't do dramatic chase the girl down the hallway, slip his fingers between the elevator doors scenes. Yixing stared at him until he thought he understood and lowered his eyes, fine, yeah. We can't do this forever, I know.

"You came," Yixing said, still breathless from his last encore. His hair was thinning now, and shorter, shaved on the sides, less room for his face to hide behind. Lu Han lifted up the VIP pass hung around his neck. "I didn't want you to be lonely. I know how it can get up there, by yourself." The good thing was, you never really forgot how to be friends.

That year Lu Han was dating seriously enough that there were hushed talks of marriage and Kris felt the need to send his well wishes from overseas in a Blue Mountain e-card. His family had met hers over a five-course meal at the restaurant where his father used to take his clients. Lu Han bought a suit for the occasion and combed his hair to the left. "Stop fidgeting, babe, you look perfect," she told his reflection in the mirror, her hands busy straightening his tie. "Old habit," he admitted. He wasn't sure why his fingers were shaking. But they loved him and didn't care that he'd been in a Korean boyband, living off his delicate features. "We all have our sordid little secrets," her father winked, rosy from a couple beers. "Yours are just out in the open for everyone to see." Lu Han laughed into his champagne glass. If only they knew.

In the car his mother folded his hands into hers and said, "Thank you." For the first time Lu Han noticed how old she'd become. The lace of wrinkles around her eyes had deepened into a fine web. Someday those would be his, and he wondered who would be looking at him then. She leaned her head against his shoulder, something she had never done, ever, and suddenly the air constricted until it was too tight, pinching his lungs together like it had its own peace to say. That was the first time he'd known his mother to fall asleep in a car, and it made him incredibly sorry for what a part of him, the deepest part, already suspected he would do.

Yixing celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday a few days early in Beijing, on stage. Lu Han made an excuse to his fiance, said an old friend was visiting. It was a half-truth, not exactly a whole lie. They huddled in a street cart slanting off a more obscure alleyway afterwards, cradling identical bowls of zhajiangmian. Yixing had some glitter stuck to the corner of his eye, and Lu Han had to look down to keep from staring. "Are you seeing someone?" He asked as nonchalantly as he could, before sucking in a long string of noodle. Some of the bean sauce got on Yixing's nose, and he was still in the middle of a confused expression when Lu Han dipped his napkin into a cup of tea and reached across the table to dab it off.

"Yeah," Yixing answered in a low voice, with Lu Han's breath on his face. "I am."

Lu Han sat down. "That's good. I'm really happy for you."

"Thanks. And, me too. You and Meng-meng were made for each other."

Lu Han found out about Yixing's accident on the Internet first, a panicked storm of concern clouding over weibo. He'd slipped on stage, having insisted on performing despite the rain. They weren't sure if it was his leg this time, or his back, but the photos showed him being carted off into the ambulance under a sheet of blue tarping. Lu Han cursed thoughout his drive to the hospital, sprinted down the hallway with a novice nurse trailing nervously behind. "Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Zhang needs--"

"I'm fine," Yixing said, calmly demolishing a bag of shrimp chips.

"You are the most inconsiderate person I have ever met," Lu Han spat out and crumpled over the bed. He felt Yixing's fingers tentatively touch his hair, then slowly, gently, card through it.

They fell asleep to a showing of Titanic, right before the scene with the violins.

"Why is it," Lu Han said in the morning, "I always find myself running to you, even after all these years."

Yixing took a second to think. "Maybe," he began, softly that Lu Han almost missed the tremor in his voice. "Maybe because once you made the mistake of running away."

Yixing leaned in first this time, and all the tension Lu Han had been holding in these past few years dissolved into the kiss, sweet, warm, nostalgic in its slightly sterile flavor. In that moment he made peace with the knowledge that there would be casualties. That he might never reconstruct the relationship with his parents he had built up over the years, brick by brick. That Xie Meng deserved so much better. That none of them would forgive him, that he didn't deserve it even if they did. From the start this had been inevitable, but he'd pushed it, and pushed himself, until he had his back up against the wall. Where are you going, a small voice in his head had warned, where do you think you have left to go? He didn't have the constitution of someone made to live a lie. It was hard, to see Yixing on TV or even in person, and know this did not belong to him, was something he had once released from his grasp. When at his own innermost core, that was all he wanted, for always.

In a couple years Yixing is diagnosed with a degenerative spine condition. It's something he'll have to live with, payback for the carelessness he's accumulated over the years. He doesn't quit performing; he sings more ballads. They switch out edgy choreography for stools and softer lighting. Lu Han takes a cooking class where he is the only male other than a nineteen-year-old Korean exchange student looking for the solution to his eternal loneliness. "Girls love this kind of shit," Yoogeun says, cracking an egg against the glass bowl with one hand. The yolk slides out perfect. All the ah-yis crowd around their table, cooing at Yoogeun's unexpected skillsmanship. Lu Han is a thirty-six-year-old grownup man who can't properly steam rice.

"This tastes really good," Yixing says.

"You don't have to lie. Seriously. Tell me the truth."

"I'm not lying," Yixing protests, widening his eyes the way he does when he's lying. "It's the best thing I've had all year."

In another couple, they buy a puppy. Yixing quits the industry entirely, save for Chinese New Year programs. He loves getting up on stage with all the old hosts, jostling awkward jokes back and forth. Lu Han suspects most people know about them, but no one gives them a hard time. It's not like they're flower boys anymore. Some days Yixing has trouble getting out of bed. He keeps a hand on his hip, as if Lu Han won't notice. Lu Han is attentive in the ways he knows how, with his lips, his hands.

The later years are compressed together, the way time speeds up the longer you've been alive. "Remember when," Lu Han starts, and sometimes is unable to finish. But they laugh about it, because it's still funny, the fact that despite everything they've ended up like this, together, like somehow they've won.


End file.
